


sprained dignity

by gaby_z



Series: the world inverted [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Eventual Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Gen, Tarot, in the sense that curses and true loves are a plot point not exactly in a shipping way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 19:09:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18079235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaby_z/pseuds/gaby_z
Summary: blue was beginning to tire of stumbling unsuspectingly across strange men sitting in her kitchen.





	sprained dignity

**Author's Note:**

> title from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. the full quote is "Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?" and is taken from a scene in which a plucky young heroine is ambushed in her kitchen by unwelcome supernatural forces in strange getups

blue was beginning to tire of stumbling unsuspectingly across strange men sitting in her kitchen.

at first the experience had held a sort of novel curiosity, but novel curiosity only went so far in a house full of psychics. the fact was a person liked to feel comfortable in her own home. a person wanted to be sure that she could stumble out of bed and things would be as they should be. a person liked to know that when she woke up at noon on a non-business day she could mindlessly slip into house shoes shaped like frogs and shove her homemade sleeping mask that read _STFU i’m sleeping_ up onto her forehead and venture into the kitchen for a yogurt without encountering a single person who hadn’t known her since she was in diapers and so might judge her for her appearance.

the universe did not seem to care what a person liked, lately.

“mom!” she hollered, slamming the fridge door shut with fervor. noise wasn’t making the situation better, but it wasn’t making it any worse either, so blue let her chair scrape loudly against the floor as she took a seat across from the intruders. adam parrish was peering considerately out the window. to give him credit, orla was conducting a ‘communing with nature’ masterclass in the yard that involved a lot of flashy and strange uses of scarves, so it was possible he was peering curiously out the window, and only managed to be considerate to blue’s plight as a convenient side effect. his companion was managing no such thing, accidental or otherwise.

his companion’s mere existence in her kitchen was offensive, but the small reptile stitched onto the breast of his aquamarine polo shirt and the obnoxiously shiny sunglasses pushed back into thick chestnut hair were making it worse. blue had thought that there couldn’t be crimes more heinous than being a stranger who was watching at her eat yogurt while looking like the thing from the lagoon’s teenage daughter at her first slumber party, but she had been wrong. his slacks were pleated. blue rumpled her overlarge sleep shirt into the waist of her overlarge sleep pants in protest.

the stranger opened his mouth to say something, but he was interrupted by calla's squally arrival. “persephone’s boy is here,” she announced to the inside of the fridge.

“i noticed,” blue said archly. this was a tactical mistake. no one could out-arch calla, especially not a girl halfway through the day’s first yogurt cup. she regrouped and went for righteously infuriated, which was safer territory. “he brought a friend.”

“he’s some kind of researcher,” adam informed blue. the stranger’s mouth became a thin line, and blue thought he probably wasn’t pleased to be spoken about like he wasn’t there. good, she thought viciously. morning ruiners deserved nothing less. “i was showing him the forest, and it disappeared while we were there.”

“while you were there?” maura asked from the sliding glass door. she was holding one hand to her head as though nursing a headache. “persephone said she talked to you about intention, adam.”

“i was intent,” he protested. sometimes adam parrish seemed so strange a creature that she forgot he was only her own age. the way he had dropped into her life in the early morning that night of the earthquake, bundled in one of persephone’s shawls in the passenger seat of the communal fox way car, and then proceeded to drop back in and out without rhyme or reason meant she tended to file him away in the same lawless category that previously had belonged entirely to persephone herself. listening to him argue with maura like she was a teacher berating him for not doing his homework brought her image of him back down to earth. “this was something else. i felt the corpse road give out.”

“the point is caution should be exercised. you could’ve disappeared with it,” maura informed him, striding barefoot towards the coffee machine. “these things can be tricky like that.”

“most things are tricky like that,” adam countered, and maura’s lips twisted, which meant she agreed.

“hold on, you didn’t mention there was a problem with the ley line,” adam’s polished stranger accused, finally finding foothold in the conversation. “you made it sound as though the forest just came and went.”

“it does just come and go,” adam told him, playing defense on two sides now. “i just didn’t realise it might not be on purpose until today. i think it’s like someone unplugging a projector.”

calla snorted derisively, and blue privately agreed. she hated similes for magic. she had spent countless after school hours in adam parrish’s forest helping him grapple with it, and even her ungifted eyes could see that the magic there wasn’t _like_ anything. it just was.

“adam, i like to know the names of the people in my kitchen so i can offer them tea,” maura said pointedly.

“i’m terribly sorry, i’m gansey,” said gansey, rising to offer maura a presidential outstretched hand, and three of the five residents of the kitchen went terribly still.

“gansey,” maura and blue said at the same time. maura sounded offhand, like she had stumbled into a liquor store hold up and was desperately trying to think of a plan of action that involved not getting shot while still leaving with a fifth of vodka in her hands. blue just sounded panicked.

“i’m sorry. have we met before?” gansey inquired.

“it is a familiar name. are you from henrietta?” maura inquired back, forcefully casual. of course the list only contained henrietta residents, born and bred. blue tried to imagine this princeling staggering in the rain, felled by some unknown sword. could death really change someone so dramatically?

what a ridiculous question.

“this is my first visit,” gansey told the room at large. he was looking from person to person, eyes considering. maura busied herself with the coffee machine. calla, uncaring and mournful, held his gaze. blue dreaded her turn. “i suppose you could be thinking of my mother. gansey is my last name, actually, and she’s in politics.”

“that must be it,” said maura, who after two decades was still not registered to vote in virginia.

“or i suppose it could be something entirely more significant, seeing as you are psychics,” gansey said thoughtfully.

blue thought that they had all forgotten adam was in the room until he spoke. “what are you guys not saying?”

“if your man wants a reading he can pay for it,” calla said, and maura made a vague noise.

“i don’t,” gansey said over whatever adam had planned to reply. “i can find out my future for myself, thank you.” he said this as if it was something to be proud of, as if calla and maura should be impressed he was not so petty and small as their usual customers. calla rolled her eyes.

“it is loud in here,” persephone observed in a small voice from where she had wandered through the doorway. maura made a noise of agreement, and blue realised that this must be what had her on edge.

“do you need me to leave?” she asked them, and gansey frowned.

“i’m terribly sorry,” he said again. “we didn’t mean to disturb you.”

it wasn’t immediately clear who he meant when he said we. perhaps he was banding himself together with adam as the obvious outliers in this group. blue thought he couldn’t have been more wrong, and adam demonstrated this by drifting to persephone’s side like a satellite in orbit.

“did you feel it?” he asked urgently, and persephone hummed. “i wasn’t sure if the cards would work without the road.”

“you think too much,” persephone informed him. “help me make tea.”

watching adam parrish move around her kitchen like he belonged there made blue’s head hurt. had it been so long since that night he first appeared? she didn’t even know where he went to school, where he lived when he wasn’t holed up with persephone in the reading room. it seemed imbalanced that he could be so confidently aware of where the tea strainer and the best mugs at fox way were kept.

gansey was watching him curiously, too.

it was easier to contemplate adam parrish’s strangeness than it was to look at gansey. of course the moment she had the thought she could think of nothing else. he was to die before the year was up. he was to die by blue’s hand, or as her true love. blue was cursed to kill her true love. blue had blindly bumped into her possible true love this morning on her way to breakfast.

blue had met her true love while wearing frog slippers.

she was going to kiss this boy.

she couldn’t kiss this boy.

blue filed away all stray observations on the way his hair fell charmingly or his thumb brushed gently against his bottom lip as unhelpful and turned back to adam parrish, who had finished making tea.

“would you like a cup?” maura asked gansey, who made agreeably polite noises, unaware that he was walking blindly into maura’s revenge for ruining her morning and also being fated to kiss her daughter and die tragically in her quiet hometown. blue thought about warning him, as some sort of true love’s duty, or perhaps just out of human decency, and then reconsidered the shininess of his sunglasses and stayed quiet.

there was no outward sign of his discomfort, but when he set the cup down it was just far enough that the fumes couldn’t reach his nose. calla and maura both snickered.

“it’s good for presence,” maura informed him, looking approving when adam chugged his own still-steaming mug down in one go.

“presence of what?” gansey asked.

persephone made a delicately sweeping sort of gesture and sat next to adam at the head of the table. “of all sorts. ah-adam.”

adam reached into one of his many pants pockets and drew out a satin bundle, and as he set them on the table something dark and muddy tumbled from his hands. they were bird feathers, and the dirt on them was crusting and strange. adam brushed them back into his pocket impatiently even as gansey made a polite grab for them.

when he was finished drawing he made a strange noise, and persephone chided, “focus.” blue glanced at the cards while adam glanced at gansey. nine of wands. the world, inverted. knight of wands. they were guiltily shuffled away and adam began again.

the magician, which persephone clucked at and adam discarded. the devil, which was laid down properly. eight of swords. five of pentacles. blue hoped this spread would be dismissed as well, but maura leaned in curiously.

“a thief?” she asked.

“it makes sense,” adam said.

“ask who,” gansey offered, and when no one said otherwise, adam began to shuffle.

ten of cups, carefully inverted. the empress, likewise. eight of swords again. adam tapped the empress.

“there’s something i’m missing,” he said.

“you’re all missing something,” persephone replied sadly. she drew a card from her gifted deck and showed it to maura. it was the ten of swords.

“oh, him,” blue said, feeling at once vindicated and disappointed. she had found herself growing fond of mr gray and the little switchblade he had gifted her. she didn’t like to think of him somehow pillaging the forest that grew off the corpse road. “you said he was a hitman, not a thief.”

both boys looked alarmed.

“he could be both,” maura suggested doubtfully.

“he’s looking for the thief,” calla clarified. “his phone told me. the thing he thought was a box.” she eyed the empress card meaningfully. 

“you think they’re the same?” maura asked.

“sorry,” adam said, truly sounding it. “i think i’ve lost the thread here.”

“as have i,” gansey said, once again sounding overly confident in his solidarity with adam parrish. “do you regularly consort with hitmen? as a family?”

maura stared at him, unimpressed. “your thief? you’re looking for someone named lynch,” she told adam, who slumped forward in his seat.

“of course i am,” he said.

  



End file.
